High performance graphics devices are becoming increasingly important in today's computer systems. Computer system manufacturers commonly install graphics accelerators on add-in cards that plug into connectors that provide connection to a graphics bus such as an accelerated graphics port (AGP) bus. Graphics accelerators are also commonly installed by soldering the component directly onto computer system motherboards. The add-in card method provides the computer system manufacturer and the end user a means for installing a newer model graphics accelerator. One can simply remove the old add-in card and install a new one. The add-in card method has a drawback in that the add-in card method is more expensive than the solder-down method. The add-in card also uses more space than a device soldered directly onto the motherboard.
The solder-down method provides a cost savings over the add-in card method, but has the disadvantage of not providing a method for upgrading the graphics accelerator. If a computer system manufacturer wishes to change to a different graphics accelerator, the computer system manufacturer must redesign the motherboard. Further, the AGP bus is meant to be a point-to-point interconnect between a system memory controller and a single graphics device, and prior computer systems that utilize an AGP bus are not able to provide an upgrade option when a graphics device is already soldered onto the motherboard.